The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports on the hardships caused by the closings of Kohl’s Food stores (not affiliated with the expanding Kohl’s Department stores, and neither of which are affiliated with Senator Herbert Kohl, but it’s a long story):
Fifteen years ago, Mary Brown sought out a senior housing apartment in a neighborhood where she could shop, offering stores she could reach by walking.
That option disappeared in August when South Milwaukee, a community of 21,000, lost its only major grocery store – the Kohl’s Food Store on S. Chicago Ave.
It’s bad enough that the closing, one of 23 Kohl’s supermarkets that were shut down, now means a trek to another city – Cudahy’s Pick ‘n Save or Potter’s Piggly Wiggly in Oak Creek – to fulfill a basic need for food. [Emphasis mine]
Insert klaxon sound here. So closing this grocery, which could not make money, has left seniors without the means to fulfill a basic human need, soon to be a basic human right, that is, a grocery store within two blocks of your home, whether it can survive as an ongoing concern or not.
The obvious answer is Foodicare, a new program designed to keep everyone well stocked, or at least give them the ability to fulfill their basic human need without crossing municipal borders and paying sales taxes somewhere else.
I may sound a little snarky, but I empathize, I really do. I mean, to get the really cool exotic beers, I cannot go the Casinport Schnucks. As a matter of fact, I have to go all the way to Creve Couer, to the Dierberg’s, a drive of ten minutes!
Once Foodicare becomes law, and I have given up work since taxation levels will have reached such heights that I will have to pay money out of my own pocket to hold down a job, there will be booze within walking distance, and I’ll never have to be sober again! Which will qualify my to serve in government, or at least to write violinic pieces in the paper about grocery stores closing and the hardship that presents the glitzing customers.
